A Study Of Public Engagement In Responsible Innovation

Public upstream engagement at the early stages of emerging technologies has recently been listed to one of essential issues in STS.While responsible innovation,an governance-idea of scientific-technological innovation prevalent in Europe and American recent years,aims to integrate participatory technology assessment and prospectively ethical embedding into anticipatory governance of emerging technologies filled with uncertainties and potential risks;as a result,the accordance between the outcomes of scientific-technological innovation and the societal values characterized by acceptable,socially desirable and sustainable ends will be reached at last.Further speaking,public engagement is a salient characteristics of responsible innovation embodied both in its theoretical frameworks and policy practices under the zeitgeist both of open innovation and democratizing science represented by contemporary civil society.Public engagement thus play a vital role in responsible innovation and this thesis can be reified in the following two aspects:on the one hand,the theoretical frameworks entails the notions of public engagement;on the other hand,the policy practices of responsible innovation takes advantage of the organized forms or methods of public engagement;besides,the former farther enriches the latter.More significantly,responsible innovation,as a product both in European and American institutional context and their policy discourses,is being gradually spread towards those developing countries in the process of global governance;moreover,the indigenization of responsible innovation is a research interest in the developing countries.Last but not least,responsible innovation,which entails that publics engage with the governance process of emerging science and technology,provides the innovation-driven development strategy in China with certain policy enlightenments.